


How To Adult Properly (And Maybe Heal Some People While We’re At It)

by jacksgreysays (jacksgreyson)



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-11-23 04:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11395509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksgreyson/pseuds/jacksgreysays
Summary: Being a medic nin is terrible.It’s disgusting and difficult and draining, even in peace time, and it’s not at all what they thought they'd be doing when they graduated from the Academy almost ten years ago. And yet?They wouldn't change a thing.(recursive fanfiction of Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine. based on@kuipernebulaand myTeam Medic!AUin which Sakura's assigned genin Team One does pass under a combat medic jounin sensei. originally posted on tumblr)





	1. (2016-06-10) ficlet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dreaming of Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/53648) by Silver Queen. 



It’s about half past three in the morning, or maybe it’s actually closer to seven, Jiro’s not really sure. Time really flies by when you’re up to the elbow in bodily fluids and trying not to let your patient’s sucking chest wound become a fatal sucking chest wound. Also, this is the last time he takes the graveyard shift because those are the worst–except that’s a lie because all shifts are the worst, no matter what time of day–and why did he ever decide to be a medic nin? Why couldn’t he be something less stressful like T&I or ANBU?

Somehow he gets through the front door and doesn’t trip and crack his head open, even though he told Youbirin to stop leaving his sandals right at the front entrance about a thousand times and by all things that are good and holy in this world, he is too tired for this.

Sakura is asleep in the living room again, something he can sense by her chakra signature and the way her hair is so ridiculously visible even in the low light. No doubt if he went to check, he’d find her hunched over notes, drooling slightly and passed out from exhaustion. She’ll complain about a crick in her neck when she wakes up, and that would serve her right.

But if she wakes up cranky then that means she won’t make bento lunches for all of them and she has been getting better at cooking so he goes over and flares his chakra once, twice, thrice, just enough to rouse her from sleep and let her know who it is that’s adjusting her to a more horizontal position. She’ll complain about being on the floor, but she won’t actually be in pain, so the bento just won’t be as elaborate but they’ll be there.

He’s debating whether or not he should make himself coffee–if he wants to ride out the day on caffein and try to reset his sleep schedule by at least waiting until the afternoon–or if he shouldn’t and should just go to sleep now and damn any forward planning, except Youbirin must have sensed his chakra too and now he’s picking his way through their living room turned into Sakura’s makeshift office and obnoxiously leaning his massive weight against Jiro like he doesn’t have at least six centimeters and nearly ten kilograms on him.

“Food,” Youbirin mumbles drowsily against the top of Jiro’s head which would be, frankly, infuriating, if he had any energy to spare.

As it is, Jiro lethargically tries to shrug him off and, when that fails, prop him against the wall or something less liable to keel over themselves at any time.

“You need to learn how to cook,” he grumbles back, but heads to the refrigerator anyway because now that he thinks about it, he’s hungry, too.

“Can’t, won’t,” Youbirin responds and, well, he kind of has a point because Youbirin once burned water and Sakura banned him from ever coming near the stove on pain of taijutsu only spar. And only an idiot–or a lovestruck masochist like Rock Lee–would go up against Sakura in a taijutsu spar.

Their fridge is a bleak wasteland as empty as his chakra reserves.

The pantry isn’t much better.

“Whose turn was it to shop for groceries?” Jiro asks, because, damn it, now he’s really hungry too.

Youbirin, now slouched halfway down the wall yet not quite sitting on the floor and eyes tenaciously closed, blearily suggests, “Check the chore chart,” the syllables tripping over his tongue.

Jiro glances around their apartment skeptically, every surface covered in charts and graphs, yes, but also prototype seals and jutsu and half-filled applications for new drugs because they are very much their sensei’s students. Finding their optimistically created chore chart would be like finding a specific kunai on a battlefield.

“Let’s just order in,” he suggests instead, grateful that the Akimichi are such a large part of Konoha’s food industry and thus have restaurants open twenty four hours a day with delivery.

“I want gyouza,” calls Sakura’s voice from the living room, because, yeah, sure. Why not? Might as well feed everyone all at once.

Jiro, as the only one standing, reaches for their phone and the dials in the number for the nearest Akimichi restaurant by heart because it’s actually shameful how frequently they order delivery at odd hours.

“I could’ve been a merchant,” he sighs after putting in the order–well, really, all he said was “This is Jiro Watanabe,” and the server just asked “The usual” and waited for an affirmative grunt before hanging up–sliding himself to the floor, too, because the floor is appparently super comfy. Gods, he’s tired.

“I could’ve been a farmer,” Sakura adds, having crawled her way into the kitchen to join them. It’s a familiar game, one they play distressingly often.

“I could’ve been some noble’s kept boy toy,” Youbirin finishes, the thought so ludicrous that, after a beat of stunned weary silence, they all burst out laughing.

Because being a medic nin is terrible. It’s disgusting and difficult and draining, even in peace time, and it’s not at all what he thought he’d be doing when he graduated from the Academy almost ten years ago. And yet? He’d never be satisfied with anything else.

He’d get bored as a merchant or a farmer or even some noble’s kept boy toy; doesn’t need to be T&I or ANBU to know that it wouldn’t be as fulfilling. He’s exhausted and hungry and slightly delirious for it, laughing hysterically on the floor of the kitchen with his two best friends in the world–he’s a medic nin and he wouldn’t change a thing.


	2. (2016-06-12) ficlet

Youbirin finds Jiro at their usual table in the hospital cafeteria, a row of emptied coffee cups standing silent guard around the piles of paperwork being furiously scribbled upon. He sidles his way into an empty chair, cradling his own paper cup of bland tea above the pages of what looks to be a step by step explanation of one of Jiro’s neural ninjutsu.

Sakura joins them ten minutes later, an expression of such dread written on her face that it leaves both he and Jiro confused. Her shift at the hospital isn’t for another hour, at least.

Wisely, Jiro silently hands over a cup of coffee and otherwise stays absolutely still.

Youbirin, unfortunately, is far less savvy even after all these years. “What happened to you?” he asks, earning Sakura’s attention and the brunt of her misdirected disgust.

“I caught my parents having sex,” she intones, voice flat and full of despair, that at first Youbirin isn’t sure he heard her correctly.

Jiro grimaces in commiseration, and though Youbirin doesn’t quite understand–he grew up in the Nohara complex, a pair of apartment buildings and the smaller family run hospital, everyone packed in together with limited sense of privacy–he manages to stay quiet.

“I guess they didn’t think I was in the house?” She explains, the hand not caught in a frenzied grip around her coffee, clutched desperately in her bright hair, “I don’t know, I was sleeping mostly, but then I heard noises and I thought maybe one of them hurt themselves. So of course I went to check and then…” She concludes with a full body shudder, taking a swig of her coffee as if to fortify herself.

“I need to move out,” she says, and at first Youbirin assumes it is an exaggeration–much the same way their ‘could have been’ game is–that he laughs.

Except, after a beat, he realizes he is the only one laughing.

“What, you’re serious?” He asks, eyes darting between his genin teammates, “That’s an overreaction, don’t you think?”

Sakura sighs, chugs the last of her coffee, and runs her hands through her hair again.

“I don’t know. Not really?” She begins, “I mean, it’s not just because of that. I’m an adult, you know? A jounin combat medic and I still live in my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house and, oh. I suppose I am a little happy that my parents are still so in love, though I’d rather not witness it. I know it could have been worse–I could have caught one of my parents with some stranger, cheating, which would have been terrible. Oh, I don’t even know where I’m going with this!”

Jiro gives a sideways smile, “You need your own space now,” he suggests.

To which Sakura nods in agreement, “Yes! That, exactly.”

Jiro nods back, the two of them bobbing their heads in pleased unison, while Youbirin watches in bemused amusement.

“Me, too,” Jiro says, finally, once they’ve finished their nodding.

“What, you caught your parents in the act?” Youbirin asks.

“Ha! No, thankfully,” he says, while Sakura gives another full body shudder, assaulted by memories. “I just meant, I’ve been thinking about moving out, too. It’s a little… strained… living with my parents, lately”

“Why?” Sakura asks, curious and surprised. She’s met the Watanabes before, all of them have met each other’s parents at one point or another, and they had been kind. And while Jiro’s parents were not so outgoing as her own parents, they were still very nice.

Jiro gives a sigh of his own, before mumbling, “They want me to get married…”

Youbirin and Sakura wait patiently for him to finish.

“… to some merchant’s daughter.”

Ah.

“But I thought they already knew about you liking guys–I mean, didn’t you already tell them? Why would they try to set you up with someone’s daughter?” Sakura asks, sentences crashing into each other clumsily.

“I have and they know,” Jiro shrugs, “but I guess they think its a phase or that I’d be willing to get married as long as they don’t expect grandchildren? Or maybe that I’d be okay if I could have a boyfriend on the side or something? What kind of person do they think I am?” He says, words getting increasingly angrier and faster, until near the end he’s nearly shouting.

It’s only because everyone else in the cafeteria has other things on their mind–or, like them, are medic nin that have carefully cultivated their indifference to non-medical things the way a gardener does his bonsai trees–that Jiro is only being stared at by his two genin teammates and not everyone in the room.

Regardless, Jiro checks himself, shoulders hunched, a flush of embarrassment across his face. When he speaks, his volume has dropped down to a more familiar level.

“I already told them I wouldn’t marry her, and they’ve accepted that at least. But it’s still rather… tense at home. And, well, I would like my own place so I don’t feel as awkward if I were to meet someone.” He shrugs again.

“As if we ever have the opportunity to,” Youbirin says, trying to inject some much needed humor into the conversation.

“We hardly have time to meet up with each other,” Sakura agrees, because trying to coordinate the schedules of three jounin combat medics for overlapping free time is nearly impossible.

“Actually, I was thinking…” Jiro begins, and both of his listeners pay attention, “I don’t really want to live all by myself. I do want my own space, but I don’t think I’m ready to be completely alone,” he explains, “And considering how I’m always at the hospital or on missions, it’d be wasteful to rent a place that’ll be empty more often than not.”

“Are you saying…” Sakura asks, hesitantly.

Jiro gives her an almost shy smile, “We could be flatmates? Split rent, see more of each other. It’ll be like when we were genin again,” he says, which prompts Sakura to smile brightly and clap with excitement, but just sours uncomfortably in Youbirin’s gut.

Yeah, just like their genin days–when Jiro and Sakura were sprinting forward and leaving him behind.

“There’s a three-bedroom place over in west Akimichi district that I’ve been looking at that isn’t too expensive,” Jiro says, pleased. Which makes sense, because any part of the Akimichi district is great and the west side is close to Konoha’s main hospital. Youbirin shouldn’t begrudge either of them that. Although…

“Three bedrooms?” he asks, interrupting Jiro and Sakura’s chatter.

She shoots him an exasperated expression, while Jiro looks at him, baffled.

“Of course I’d look for a place with three bedrooms,” Jiro says, “It’s not like the three of us are going to share a one room apartment.”

Oh.

Youbirin tries not to let the relief show on his face.

“… Dibs on master bedroom.”


	3. (2016-07-19) ficlet

“Oh,” says the guy, eyes gone shiny and wide, like he’s two breaths away from swooning. As it is, a flush begins to spread across his cheeks and he begins fidgeting with the ends of his fingerless gloves. “I’d like that, Watanabe-san,” he says with a shy smile which isn’t unattractive at all.

“Please,” Jiro says, flashing a charming smile of his own which Sakura has actually caught him practicing in their bathroom mirror, “Call me Jiro,” he requests, before placing a hand on the other’s resting between them on the bar.

Jiro’s latest conquest really does look like he’s about to faint, eyes fluttering like out of a cheap romance novel.

Youbirin looks like he’s about to gag, though he hides it quickly enough behind his drink.

Sakura rolls her eyes, but they both stay silent while their teammate works his magic and gets the guy’s number and promise of a future date. Once he leaves out of earshot, however, they’re free to let loose.

“Oh my god,” Sakura bursts out, syllables stretched out in conflictingly amused horror, while Youbirin follows through on his impulse and gives mock retching noises.

“What?” Jiro protests, “It’s not my fault I’ve got game and both of you don’t.”

“That was not game, Jiro,” she scoffs, “Come on,” she scoffs, “That guy was way too easy to need any kind of game.”

Youbirin, backing her up, leans in close and flutters his eyelashes uncontrollably. “Isn’t this a symptom of electrocution? I mean, you’d know, Jiro-san,” he says, an exaggerated simper on the honorific.

“Medic-nin are so impressive,” Sakura adds, her own fluttering eyelids making Jiro laugh.

“Hey, low hanging fruit, right?” he asks with a smirk.

“I know you want something to be low hanging,” she quips back, pleased when she hears both Jiro and Youbirin sputter into their drinks.

“Sakura!” Jiro chokes out, appalled.

Youbirin, because he’s one step away from being uncultured swine, simultaneously wipes up his chin with his sleeve and holds out a hand for a high five.

She magnanimously deigns him with one.

“You guys are the worst,” Jiro mutters, but he waves over the bartender for another round, and that’s almost as good as him telling them he loves them.

“Lies,” Youbirin says,“we are the best,” and since Jiro doesn’t say anything to the contrary then it must be true.

Once they’ve been settled with new drinks, Sakura smacks Jiro on the shoulder to get his attention. She’s not actually trying to hurt him, but her super strength is kind of her default state, so he still winces at the impact.

“Feel free to go after your new beau,” she suggests, because why shouldn’t she live vicariously through one of her best friends. Part of her embarrassment at how easily Jiro was able to pick up that guy is because they’ve all collectively had so little free time that none of them have gotten anywhere near as close to getting laid as that in a shamefully long time.

“But what about–” Jiro gestures at all three of them, because each of them getting free time is rare, but all of them getting free time at the same time? Is damn near impossible.

“Don’t sweat it,” Youbirin says easily, probably feeling the same thing she is, “Sakura and I can get drunk by our lonesome and talk about how we apparently lack any game whatsoever.”

“If you’re sure?” Jiro asks, expression only a little bit guilty, and already standing up from his seat.

“Go on, already,” she says, shooing him away. As he leaves, she calls out after him, “And remember, if you bring him back to our place, no sex in the common areas!”

“Especially not the kitchen!” Youbirin adds, obnoxiously loud.

Jiro flips them off without turning around, otherwise acting as if he can’t hear their heckling.

She and Youbirin just laugh.


	4. (2016-10-18) ficlet

Sakura wakes to a thump somewhere in the vicinity of her feet, and the long, low groan of a hungover idiot.

It’s better than an alarm clock, really. Or, well, worse since she can’t just smash Youbirin in one hit to shut him up.

“Sakura,” Youbirin says, voice muffled by the blanket she’s kicked off in her sleep and the way he’s practically kissing the floor, “Sakura, ow. Sakura… how? Why, Sakura? Why this?” He asks, as betrayed as a muddled-minded moron like him can be.

She gives a groan of her own, pressing it into the pillow, before kicking in his direction. She’s not augmenting it–it’s too early for that shit–but she feels a connect and Youbirin curls away with another pained moan.

“Go away. I’m not on shift and it’s before noon, you’re breaking the rules.”

Youbirin crawls his way up the bed, falling obnoxiously on top of her. It’s far from sexual–only barely affectionate in nature, given that clearly he’s trying to smother the life out of her.

“Get off me,” she wheezes as her lungs deflate beneath his weight, “Go away,” she repeats.

“But Sakura, this is my room,” the big baby whines, and then completely ignores her by wrapping himself around her.

She grumbles, but lets him, because he’s warm and she’s far too lazy to pull the blanket back.

They quiet back down, breathes coming in deeper and slower, the two of them shifting into a more comfortable position–Youbirin less of a big spoon and more of a giant koala with Sakura as the small and brightly colored tree.

“Wake me up before noon again and you’re dead,” she murmurs, tucking a cold nose to the collar of his pajamas.

Obediently, he recites, “After noon, coffee, got it,” before the both of them drift back into sleep.

Of course, they’re both woken up less than thirty minutes later when Jiro lands on top of them, climbing through the window in yesterday’s rumpled clothing to escape his latest one night stand.

—

Shishou, spotting the three of them and their less than impressive states, laughs–loud and long and entirely unnecessary.

“Nngh,” Youbirin grunts, looks two seconds away from dropping to the ground and curling into a ball in defeat.

Jiro, in contrast, tries and fails to respond with a smile of his own. It wouldn’t have worked even without the awkward lean he’s adopted where Sakura propped him against the wall.

Apparently, last night’s conquest–while easily impressed by medic-nin–was less than impressed by Jiro’s less than graceful “this was fun, goodbye forever” spiel. And, apparently, a trainee in T&I.

Sakura would like to think she doesn’t look as awful as her genin teammates, but she certainly feels as miserable, and she knows for the sheer travesty of her outfit, she’s going to have to avoid Ino today.

Shizune-senpai looks unfairly embarrassed by them: as if she never had to deal with Shishou in worse condition, and during her reign as Hokage at that!

When Shishou finally stops laughing, wiping a tear away from her right eye, she turns around and gestures imperiously for them all to follow.

Even in their disastrous states, the three–four, actually, including Shizune-senpai–hop to attention immediately. They may be embarrassments as people, but there’s no way they’re anything less than the best when it comes to being medic-nin.


End file.
